Jason Aldean, Lady Antebellum Have Top-Selling Albums of 2011

Nielsen and Billboard have released their 2011 Music Industry Report, and the findings are quite encouraging, especially for country music fans. With album sales up across the board for the first time in seven years and digital album sales on a surprisingly steady incline as well, Jason Aldean and Lady Antebellum released two of the top-selling records of the year.

With his high-energy ‘My Kinda Party,’ Aldean landed the fifth top-selling album of the year, with Lady Antebellum’s ‘Own the Night’ sitting at No. 10.

Also earning a high placement in 2011 was Taylor Swift, who was the ninth top-selling artist of 2011. Lady Antebellum was the sixth top-selling artist, and Aldean came in at eighth, just above Swift.

Overall, country album sales dropped 1.8 percent since 2010, but digital sales of country albums went up by an impressive 27.1 percent. Topping many of the lists was Adele with her sultry soul sound and her chart-topping release ’21.’ The British songstress scored the top-selling record of 2011 and more than doubled Michael Buble‘s second place spot in the same category.

In addition to their other 2011 statistics, sales and Grammys, Lady Antebellum also finished as the biggest selling group of the year for the second year in a row, with 2.1 million album sales. And Aldean has equal reason to rejoice, as he released the No. 1 country album of the year. Though we can’t predict what 2012 will bring, 2011 was an incredible year for country music.